Description
An old record player; an unposted letter; a pearl necklace never purchased; a badly written poem from the woman you love: tokens, gifts, and objects lost or left behind, desired or not wanted at all are the starting points for the stories in Worldly Goods, a new collection by Alice Petersen. The stories reveal that ownership is more than possession, for Petersen shows how small objects stand as markers of our attempts to communicate with each other.
PRAISE FOR ALICE PETERSEN & WORLDLY GOODS
“Assured and stylistically confident … Petersen’s knowledge of and precise language for subjects such as natural history, the domestic arts, and music add to the classical feel of these stories, set all around the English-speaking Commonwealth. Crisp sentences and slightly old-fashioned vocabulary combine gratifyingly with evocative visual imagery to make this collection a pleasure to read.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Worldly Goods is a multi-faceted diamond: its carbon base is the stuff of life, and its reflective power is dazzling. Petersen can take a small event and in a few pages create an entire world … a writer this good needs to be read.”—Quill & Quire, starred review
“What a thrill to follow a writer from promise to fulfillment. Alice Petersen’s debut collection of short stories … marked her as a young writer to watch. [This] collection, Worldly Goods, more than delivers.”
—Montreal Review of Books
“Alice Petersen writes as eloquently about the natural world as she does about the world of human emotion and desire. This is a wise and impressive collection of
stories.”
—David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World
PRAISE FOR ALL THE VOICES CRY
“Finely crafted and pared down to their bare essentials … These are stories that work on multiple levels, and continue to divulge their secrets after several rereadings.”
—Quill & Quire
“Among the book’s pleasures are bursts of descriptive panache.”
—Globe & Mail
“Alice Petersen’s All the Voices Cry is masterful and potent—incredibly satisfying for a reader.”
—Kathleen Winter, author of Annabel
